A journey of the mind afloat in space and time. An emotion capture. Arresting images and some great poems and lyrics.

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Born May 12th in 1812 Edward Lear he was. Born in a war between Britain and France, born in a War with the USA when the guns roared out for all the day, and the great flag flew despite rockets and bombs, still flew in the morning inspiring a song that the Nation still sings today.

Famous for writing “nonsense poetry”. But when I read his poems I see in them a pretty good description of democratic parliamentary business the world over.

“How wise we are! though the sky be dark, and the voyage be long, yet we never can think we were rash or wrong, while round in our Sieve we spin!”

Of course, one of the greatest features of democracy is that we can openly criticize our governments. It is only in repressive regimes that the populace fear to criticize the glorious leader.

Morse code, the simplest, if very long winded form of electronic/radio signalling. Can be replicated using signal lights also. Takes very little bandwidth. Morse code is not dead yet, and may never be.

I love the story of Morse code and Baltimore in West Cork, Ireland. In the days of transatlantic sailing the ships from Britain, France, Germany and the rest of Europe left via the “Western Approach” which skirted the south west coast of Ireland. One of the earliest telegraph lines in Ireland ran from Dublin to Baltimore in West Cork. An early submarine telegraph ran across the Irish Sea and connected West Cork to the London Market.

Packages were telegraphed to Baltimore in West Cork by Morse Code. They were pasted onto letters, and placed in the mail. Then a pilot cutter would sail out to the departing liners and deliver the very last mail to the ships for the New York market.

When the Liners arrived from New York they placed their urgent letters on the pilot cutter on the way East. The boat sailed into Baltimore and the messages were telegraphed to London.

The local business people in Baltimore realised that for a short few years, before a working transatlantic cable was laid, they lived on a gold mine. A smart businessman with a fat pocket and a trading account could make a lot of money by buying the right stocks and shares before the news reached the markets. The smart businessmen living in Baltimore made sure their telegraphs to London arrived on the trading floor before the news from New York. In the process some fat pockets got even fatter.

A poor telegraph operator might open the mail packets and slowly stack them up in preparation for sending them. He might then wait for ten minutes while a smart businessman wrote an instruction and put it to the front of the queue. I’m pretty sure the poor telegraph operator was rewarded handsomely for the favour. That would be pretty standard good neighbourliness in a place like West Cork.

This is not a photo of my first car, but it is a photo of a beige Renault 4 with a sunroof. My first car was a beige Renault 4 with a sunroof, but it also had matching dents on each front corner, and a chiaroscuro quality imparted by the proliferation of rust.

How does it qualify for my bucket list? Well, it was a rust-bucket!

My Renault 4 came to me by way of my Sister, Síle, who decorated it with the two matching dents by knocking down first one pillar and then the other on the driveway of her house in Newbridge. She bought the car second hand from the Burkes, who owned a garage in Tipperary. That might explain why a Renault 4 came to be fitted with a sunroof. It also had a go-fast stripe, and I suspect they did something to the engine to give it a bit of power, but maybe that was just an illusion imparted by the stripe.

There is a magic and a nostalgia associated with your first car. It is usually a piece of rubbish, but it is a very important piece of rubbish. Your first car is probably the most expensive and most important thing you have ever owned up to the point where you get your second car, or a house, or an engagement ring.

Your first car represents your freedom as a young adult. Your ability to strike out at great distances without begging rides from parents or siblings, without the need to rely on public transport.

It is a space of your own. If you have a car you can take a girlfriend for a date in said car. Louise learned how to drive in it, and there was no worry that she might scrape a door or a wing as there might have been with later cars, of which we will say nothing. Before you know what is happening a girlfriend can become a wife, much to the confusion of her brothers who would not be caught dead in a car like that!

You could bring friends to rugby matches as far afield as Malahide, Greystones, Clonskeagh and Churchtown. You could give rides to Glénans trainees for holidays in Bere Island, Baltimore or Collanmore Island, instead of having to hitch rides from other members.

When the last exams finished you were able to bring a gang of friends to Rutland Island in Donegal for a week in Murf’s holiday home. They could then have a great laugh about the acceleration qualities of a Renault 4 engine going uphill in a headwind with five big lads on board.

You could nip up the Wicklow mountains for Sunday hikes, or head off to Dingle or Glenbeigh for a rainy Irish summer holiday. The possibilities were endless.

It was a gateway to adventures. My Renault 4 carried dinghies, ribs and sailboards on the roof. It had a great cargo space, especially when you dropped the back seats. It held lots of sailing equipment, hiking equipment, camping gear, washing machines and plenty of second hand furniture. When we bought a house it was furnished with bits and pieces of second hand furniture bought from the small ads in the Irish Press and carted back in or on the Renault 4.

Because it was rusty and a bit battered there was none of the concern that you might scratch it, or leave a stain on the seats, or get a chip in the paintwork. I didn’t worry that the seawater would add more rust. I didn’t mind if puppies shat or puked in the back. It was a workhorse, not an ornament. It enabled my adventures rather than decorating my existence.

In its final years the rust holes became larger and larger. On rainy days it was advisable to wear plastic bags on your feet because of the spray coming up through the floor.

Then one day it stopped. Dead.

A friend of my Sister came up from Kildare and towed it away to see service in its final days as a hen house.

When I look back at the sum of my experiences in that battered old rust bucket I pity any teenager or 20-something who is gifted a brand new vehicle as their first car. You will never understand the unadulterated joy to be had from owning a total piece of crap, bought and paid for with your own money.

I already have one of these buckets at home. They are tough black plastic, very durable, very strong. The reason this one is on my bucket list is because of the one I lost back in about 1988. Summer of ’87 I learned how to sail and took to it like a duck to water. The following year I jumped on any boat that would have me.

I think this bucket was on Tom Colliers boat, a steel 50 foot sloop. We sailed her from Kinsale to Baltimore and arrived for the Baltimore Regatta. So that gives me an exact weekend, the August Bank Holiday.

There was a rope tied to the bucket handle, finished off with a beautiful monkeys paw. Not the hand of a tree dwelling simian. The rope one (see below).

So I, in my naivety, thought I could dip for a bucket of water from a cruising yacht simply by slinging over the bucket and holding onto the rope. The bucket hit the sea, the bucket filled. Bye bye bucket.

When we got to Baltimore I toddled up to the chandlers and purchased a replacement for the boat. The damage to my wallet was minor in comparison to the damage done to my ego. Lesson learned. When you throw things into the sea off a yacht you must tie them on if you ever want them back.

So this bucket is on my bucket list, not as something i want to do, but as a memory of a good lesson learned.

Arrr, this be my favourite day of the year. International talk like a pirate day!

All hands on deck, man the main brace, aloft me boys and loose the sheets, set courses, topsails, topgallants, royals, moonrakers and skyscrapers. Weigh anchor and cast off. That be a sail on the horizon and she bears the look of a fat merchantman ripe for plucking.

Charge your pistols with fresh powder and give your cutlass a keen edge, it’s time to do what pirates do.

Here is a poem about real pirates. There was a famous raid on Baltimore in West Cork in 1631 by Barbary pirates from Algeria. The pirates captured 108, mostly English settlers who worked in the fishing industry in the town. Only 3 were ever ransomed. The poem is in a style I find overblown and turgid, in the Victorian tradition. Arr, but it be what it be.

The Sack of Baltimore ; by Thomas Osborne Davis

The Summer sun is falling soft on Carbery’s hundred isles,
The summer sun is gleaming still through Gabriel’s rough defiles;
Old Innisherkin’s crumbled fane looks like a moulting bird,
And in a calm and sleepy swell the ocean tide is heard:
The hookers lie upon the beach; the children cease their play;
The gossips leave the little inn; the households kneel to pray;
And full of love, and peace, and rest, its daily labor o’er,
Upon that cosy creek there lay the town of Baltimore.

A deeper rest, a starry trance, has come with midnight there;
No sound, except that throbbing wave, in earth, or sea, or air!
The massive capes and ruin’d towers seem conscious of the calm;
The fibrous sod and stunted trees are breathing heavy balm.
So still the night, these two long barques round Dunashad that glide
Must trust their oars, methinks not few, against the ebbing tide.
Oh, some sweet mission of true love must urge them to the shore!
They bring some lover to his bride who sighs in Baltimore.

All, all asleep within each roof along that rocky street,
And these must be the lover’s friends, with gently gliding feet—
A stifled gasp, a dreamy noise! “The roof is in a flame!”
From out their beds and to their doors rush maid and sire and dame,
And meet upon the threshold stone the gleaming sabre’s fall,
And o’er each black and bearded face the white or crimson shawl.
The yell of “Allah!” breaks above the prayer, and shriek, and roar:
O blessed God! the Algerine is lord of Baltimore!

Then flung the youth his naked hand against the shearing sword;
Then sprung the mother on the brand with which her son was gor’d;
Then sunk the grandsire on the floor, his grand-babes clutching wild;
Then fled the maiden moaning faint, and nestled with the child:
But see! yon pirate strangled lies, and crush’d with splashing heel,
While o’er him in an Irish hand there sweeps his Syrian steel:
Though virtue sink, and courage fail, and misers yield their store,
There ’s one hearth well avenged in the sack of Baltimore.

Midsummer morn in woodland nigh the birds begin to sing,
They see not now the milking maids,—deserted is the spring;
Midsummer day this gallant rides from distant Bandon’s town,
These hookers cross’d from stormy Skull, that skiff from Affadown;
They only found the smoking walls with neighbors’ blood besprent,
And on the strewed and trampled beach awhile they wildly went,
Then dash’d to sea, and pass’d Cape Clear, and saw, five leagues before,
The pirate-galley vanishing that ravaged Baltimore.

Oh, some must tug the galley’s oar, and some must tend the steed;
This boy will bear a Scheik’s chibouk, and that a Bey’s jerreed.
Oh, some are for the arsenals by beauteous Dardanelles;
And some are in the caravan to Mecca’s sandy dells.
The maid that Bandon gallant sought is chosen for the Dey:
She ’s safe—she’s dead—she stabb’d him in the midst of his Serai!
And when to die a death of fire that noble maid they bore,
She only smiled, O’Driscoll’s child; she thought of Baltimore.

’T is two long years since sunk the town beneath that bloody band,
And all around its trampled hearths a larger concourse stand,
Where high upon a gallows-tree a yelling wretch is seen:
’T is Hackett of Dungarvan—he who steer’d the Algerine!
He fell amid a sullen shout with scarce a passing prayer,
For he had slain the kith and kin of many a hundred there.
Some mutter’d of MacMurchadh, who brought the Norman o’er;
Some curs’d him with Iscariot, that day in Baltimore.